AH mentality

AH Mentality

The WoW AH has some distinct differences from reality. Recognizing these differences will help to play the 'AH game' better.

*There is no product differentiation in the WoW world. The eternal earth I purchase from you is exactly the same as the eternal earth I purchase from someone else. Why is this important? There is not really a reason to have customer loyalty. The eternal earths are always exactly the same. The only difference is price. Does the seller's name actually mean anything? Will you remember him/her in 2 days? A week? Probably not. Don't think your customer generally remembers you either. 99% of them won't remember that they bought that epic from XXXX. They just remember that they bought an epic FOR $$$.
-The product is identical, so price is king.

*People will always undercut. If there is no producer loyalty, the only way to ensure that your product gets purchased first is to sell it for less. Repeat multiple times and you have an undercutting war. It will stop when either the market is bought out by consumers, a re-lister, or when other competitors give up due to lower profit margins than another venture.

To make the most out of the auction house you need to understand its cyclic nature. More people play on the weekends. This means that more people farm raw materials (skinning, ore, herbs, cloth) and more people buy weapons / armor. Ie: Buy your raw materials Saturday / Sunday and sell your weapons & armor Friday / Saturday. Yeah! Tuesday! Time to use those arena points… dang. Now I need enchanting mats and armor kits…. enchanting materials spike on Tuesday afternoon / evening and when raiding guilds finish their raiding for the week/evening. Food / pots / elixirs / bullets sell out at 5-8pm server too…. If you're not raiding yourself… know when to post/undercut to keep profits maximized.

There are a great many areas that can be farmed for at least 200-250g/hour. (Some places even better) If your serious about making effective gold, you should produce more gold in the AH time you spend than if you went to farm. Undercutting too much will spend time and money. (Money being 'lost' by farming opportunity cost). "Time is money, friend." absolutely rings true. If the time to post, craft, Disenchant items isn't pulling 250g+/hour, it isn't worth my time. Developing a 'floor' price for your AH market is essential. Figure out what your needed profit would need to be over the time you spend prospecting / milling / crafting / buying materials is in order to beat 250g/hour. If you can't beat 250g/hour on an endeavor, you should probably just farm.

Since individuals will undercut, and not know/understand the 250g/hour idea, there will be opportunities to buy and repost for profit. On many, many occasions I have purchased useful items on the AH for less than the cost of materials to make them. Through disenchanting or reposting at a modest profit form raw materials, gold can be made quickly.

Read patch notes. A great, many people never know what is happing in a future patch until it HAPPENS. People will hear about changes from their friends, maybe look at their class's changes, maybe even glance at new armor models. Very of the 6million subscribers visit elitistjerks, MMO-Champion, WorldofRaids, etc. I have found that the market will tend to lag until the next weekend, stabilizing on the weekend after that for most patch content changes.

Diversify. Markets change across the board at times. You're much more likely to have a consistent income by playing in 8-11 AH markets', than relying upon your 1-2. Skinning, Armor Kits, Enchanting mats, gems, recipies, epics, potions, herbs, ore, glyphs, raiding food, and eternals, are some of the larger AH markets. This can be expanded as well if you utilize Cross-Faction Auction houses. This requires a buddy (or second account). Neutral Auction Houses provide a vehicle to play two markets at the same time. You are not allowed to bid/buy on your own account's auction, which is why you have a buddy/second account. Mechanics work as follows: The Neutral auction houses have a 15% AH fee. Your own faction has it's 5% AH fee. So, I want to first transfer 100g to my buddy by purchasing a grey item from the neutral AH. (best to coordinate real-time on vent… I have sniped some people before when I've noticed several low lvl toons in BB.)


Person A posts an auction for 100g for that broken whatever.
Buddy buys it.
Opposite faction person recieves 100 - 15(AH fee) = 85g.
Buddy transfers gold to auctioneer toon in captial city and buys 25 widgets for 75g. (3g each)
Buddy posts 25 widgets in a stack for 1s, Person A buys it.
Person A posts 25 widgets for 10g each and brings in 250 - 12.5 = 237.5g from a 100g investment. Buddy still has 10g on his toon too.
Granted, this is an extreme case of a 333% mark up. What type of mark up do you need to break even? Basically, the 15+5 = 20%(not exactly, but close) To be worth time investment / hassle, I recommend doing x-faction transactions on times have have a 40% or more
variance. So, let's say that horde sells widgets for 6g, and alliance for 10g
100g -> 85g to horde, buy 14 for 84g, sell 14 for 140 - 5% or 137g. That's 37g to split between you and your buddy. (37% gain on 67% price difference)

Note that some vanity items or faction only obtainable items (blood elf dagger) will go for large amounts. The opportunity for niche markets is decent.